Yacademy is a Jakarta-based online and offline platform that connects digital skills gaps to talent. It also provides training and education courses in digital technology.

For startups, Yacademy does this through MIP to support overseas technology companies seeking to expand into Indonesia.

“This programme is designed to connect and enable startups to collaborate with experienced industry players from enterprises executive, successful entrepreneurs, to the government. We aim to really introduce the teams to all the benefits and challenges they will face in the Indonesian market,” says Yacademy chief executive officer and founder Arne van Looveren.

The four-week MIP is set on a path to ensure solid collaboration among nations to foster the Southeast Asian (SEA) startup ecosystem and enable an immediate market access point.

One week prior to their arrival in Jakarta, the startups attended virtual workshops on basic knowledge of regulations and business trends in Indonesia.

For the next one week, the startups will undergo an intensive schedule of meetings and networking events with a number of venture capitalists (VCs), the Fintech Association of Indonesia, the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information, Doku, Jakarta Business Networkers, and Coworkinc.

“The inter-connectedness among tech startups in SEA has grown exponentially over the past few years. We believe that all parties are also fully aware of the importance of having a regional perspective. This includes the movement in collaborating with each other to support each of the nation’s high-growing startups to succeed internationally,” said Kejora Ventures managing director Andy Zain.

This is the second MIP run by Yacademy and hosted by Kejora in collaboration with MDEC. The first program was held in August 2016.

“The MIP programme was an immense value-add for the startups. It offered valuable insights into the Indonesian market, and we made promising business connections. The team supported us throughout in an agile way,” says Asean Centre of Entrepreneurship (ACE), Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (maGIC) director Mohamed Yusnee Rahmat Yusof in a press release.

Abundant opportunities

Three Malaysian startups Recite Lab, Bantu.my, and Mobiversa introduced themselves and shared their thoughts on this programme at an event hosted by Kejora.

Recite Lab through their mobile app Recite provides Quran recital validation to Muslim adults who want to reconnect and revise their recitals but have no time to engage with a teacher. Users can record the recital on the app and have it validated or corrected by a qualified teacher.

Recite Lab co-founder and CEO Mazlita Mat Hassan says that it is important to find credible sources in order to be able to tap into the right market.

“Before we entered the programme, we were asked who Recite Lab will be collaborating with. In Indonesia, we need to find credible sources like qualified Quran teachers to validate recitals in Bahasa Indonesia,” she adds.

Bantu.my is an online freelancing marketplace for business services that allows users to ‘help’ buy or sell their skills. Services in Bantu.my are divided into six main categories -- advisory, documentation, creative, marketing, technology, and copywriting.

To Bantu.my co-founder Zharif Samani, it is time for Bantu.my to expand regionally especially to Indonesia with its huge number population.

“It has been our plan to expand regionally because the demand from SEA countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Brunei are high. There are a lot of opportunities in the Indonesian market and the existing players had validated the market for us,” he explains.

Mobiversa is a financial technology startup that provides e-payment services for merchants.

Mobiversa chief executive officer S. Baskar said that it now has 600 merchants across Malaysia that use their platform and Indonesia’s market will probably will 10 times bigger.

“Through this programme I hope we can gain more insights into the country and build relationships with the right partners,” he says.

According to Loovern, this programme helps overseas startups obtain knowledge of the ecosystem in Indonesia and overcome the challenges in culture differences.

“It is good for everyone to be clear on how the Indonesian market in growing and it requires creativity to overcome cultural differences so these startups can deliver fresh idea to the ecosystem,” he told Digital News Asia (DNA).